


Life on the Edge

by Dawnwind



Category: The Professionals
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-17
Updated: 2016-04-17
Packaged: 2018-06-02 19:46:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6579973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dawnwind/pseuds/Dawnwind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Doyle's hurt and confused, waiting for Bodie--but for some reason, Queen Elizabeth is by his side.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Life on the Edge

Life on the Edge  
By  
Dawnwind

Doyle stared at the knife, transfixed. It wasn’t often he saw a weapon of this sort, from this perspective. There were so few military grade knives in England, laws being what they were. He could appreciate an elegant, well made weapon when he came across one, especially so unexpectedly.

The handle had four small grooves cut into the bone, clearly to improve the grip. He couldn’t see the blade from this angle, but he knew the steel was wicked sharp, and long—probably close to ten inches.

Where was Bodie? Shouldn’t he know?

Doyle turned his head, looking straight at Queen Elizabeth. She gazed serenely back, without acknowledging his presence. He must have hit his head somehow, because he was seeing double Queens. Possibly even multiple Elizabeths.

Disconcerted, Doyle peered past Her Majesty and her entourage, hearing a ruckus nearby. Bodie bellowed something unintelligible, and Doyle should have had his back. 

He reached out, searching for the pistol that had been in his left hand only moments ago, but his fingers scrabbled on rough pavement, finally closing on a bank note. He recognised the feeling of the silky, oily paper money was printed on, flicking it aside. He’d come in with a gun, hadn’t he? 

Not a knife. This knife wasn’t his.

HRH Elizabeth gave him a proper stiff upper lip, like a good Brit, and didn’t mention the extraordinary faux pas. 

He had the eeriest feeling he was missing something vital—that there was something he should be more concerned about. And it wasn’t because the Queen was ignoring him. All things being equal, he would have preferred conversing with Princess Diana. At least HRH didn’t launch into her Christmas Day speech. He’d heard that one often enough.

“Doyle?” Bodie yelled desperately and the sound of a gunshot cut him off abruptly.

That got his attention. Doyle looked up, immediately on alert, but in the murky shadows, he couldn’t quite make out what had happened. Some kind of fight. _Where was Bodie?_

As if summoned like a genie, Bodie appeared. Doyle blinked. Bodie looked huge but insubstantial, the edges of his body not quite solid. Was something wrong with Bodie or was his own vision wavering? 

In comparison, Queen Elizabeth had shrunk to a tiny, flat version of herself. 

“Wha’ happened? Were you shot?” Doyle demanded, unnerved. He tried to push up. At the very least, he should have bowed in front of Her Majesty.

“Bloody hell,” Bodie said, his face going pale. “Don’t!” He pushed Doyle’s shoulder to the cement.

 _Damn, that hurt._

Pain flooded in as if doors had opened wide, letting in all comers. Doyle dragged in a scrappy breath, agony settling against his lower left rib cage, shards of steel shredding his resolve. _The knife._

How had he not realised he’d been stabbed? 

It was astonishingly difficult to raise his hands and clasp the grip. His fingers would hardly close and the strain of keeping his arms up caused him to break out in a chilly sweat. “Pull it out,” he demanded.

“Hey!” Bodie grabbed both his hands, gently lowering them. “You can’t pull it out, you’ll bleed to death.”

Felt like he was bleeding to death _now._ Already his thoughts were scattering, vaguely disturbing and distracted. He couldn’t remember why they’d even come. Certainly not to be knighted or any sort of rot like that. Why was Lizzie here anyway? 

“You get ‘im?” he asked, to sound more with it than he was. “Th’one with the knife?” He had to establish that it really wasn’t his knife. Owning one without a permit was illegal. Particularly when She was watching his every move.

“Shot that bastard Fortnam through the ‘eart,” Bodie said mercilessly, waving a hand at someone Doyle couldn’t see from this vantage point. “Just as he rammed this into your guts.”

 _Nice to know exactly where it was situated._ Doyle craned his neck to look at the handle again and the earth tipped alarmingly to the right as if he were riding the roller coaster at Brighton Pier. He gagged, sure he was going to be sick all over Bodie’s leather shoes. Good thing Elizabeth was so far behind him—and lying flat against the cement.

“Steady on, yeah?” Bodie said, stroking Doyle’s cheek. “You’ve gone all gooseflesh. Breathe.” 

Still nauseated, Doyle would not have admitted how much it hurt to do that simple, vital action. Each inhalation sliced pieces off his chest—no, Bodie had said the knife was in his guts—so must be sections of his guts coming free. Like being filleted from the inside out. He finally closed his eyes just to stay conscious, willing the spasms in his belly to subside. 

He wasn’t about to pass out, not on Bodie. He’d done that—that time he was shot in the chest, in his own flat. What was the expression? Been there, done that. He couldn’t, _wouldn’t,_ scare Bodie again. He’d been on the other side, knew how hard it was to play the calm, supportive partner when your world was crashing in.

Except this was damned impossible. If the blade was just gone…

Think past it. Stay calm, rational. Analyse the situation and make informed decisions. Wasn’t that what he’d been taught in the Met? Not to mention countless strategy sessions at CI5.

“You’ve shot—“ What the hell was his name? The man they’d been after. _A forger._ That single piece of information dropped neatly into place in the middle of the detritus that was his present thought processes. 

_Ah._ Doyle glanced over at Her Majesty, sussing out why he could see her so clearly. And so many of her ilk. Bank notes. Dozens of them. Forgeries. “Where’s ‘is mate?”

There had been two of them. He was sure of it. He could almost picture a blond man, startled, stacks of fifty pound notes tumbling off a table, scattering across the floor like vaguely pinkish snow.

“Tied up at the moment. Over there,” Bodie said tightly, stripping off his jacket and wrapping it carefully around the knife sticking straight up from Doyle’s left side. 

“St-stop,” Doyle ground out, the pain becoming part of him, subsuming his entire being, erasing who he used to be. 

“Sorry, sunshine, but we’ve got to stop the bleeding.” Bodie sounded strangled, but he didn’t stop, he pushed that much harder.

Doyle existed, unable to breathe or think, feeling the sliced ribbons of his guts slip sliding away. Fingers clamped around his wrist, hard, penetrating the agonising haze. _Bodie._

Bodie anchoring him to the present, to life, to all they had together. He cracked one eye, peering blearily at his partner. Bodie was saying something but it took Doyle a few moments to hear him clearly.

“Stay with me, you little shite,” Bodie chanted. “Or I’ll kill you meself.”

“Callin’ me names?” Doyle chided when he could get enough air to make sound.

“Sod it, you’re taking years off my life.” Bodie swiped a hand furiously across his eyes, leaving a smear of red on his cheek.

Doyle really didn’t want to know where that came from. He licked his lips, the tightness in his chest making him want to cough. “Where’s th’lads?”

“Asking about Murph and Jax, are you, when I’m right in front of you?”

“Yer a pain…” Doyle tried a chuckle for effect but it hurt so bad he wasn’t going to do that anytime soon, “’n me arse.”

“That was last night, berk,” Bodie said, sounding rough. “You liked it then.” He swore under his breath, looking away. “Where the hell is the rescue squad?”

“Won’t be a tick,” Doyle whispered. “Patience—“ Something vital seemed to twist inside him and for a while he was nothing but white noise. There was no way he would leave Bodie, _no way._ He could still feel the two of them, wrapped around each other in their big bed, Bodie moving inside him and his whole being shrinking to the sensations of their souls linked together forever.

~*~

“You’re a skinny sod, I’ll give you that.” The surgeon peered over his spectacles, examining the fine example of his own handiwork. “Sutures holding well, should mend cleanly.”

Doyle turned his neck to look down his own body. A long wound transected his flat abdomen on the left side. Directly over where his spleen used to be, or so he’d been told. His whole belly was black and blue—apparently due to the internal bleeding after his spleen spilled out into his abdominal cavity—and the doctor’s neat stitches crisscrossed the incision in a row of Xs.

Should hurt like blazes, but he’d been given a lovely dose of morphine before the dressing change. Cheers.

“The sister will redress the wound and I’ll see you tomorrow,” the doctor said, walking out.

“Where’s Bodie?” Doyle asked when a middle-aged woman he’d never seen, wearing the bright blue uniform of a nurse, bent over to apply gauze and tape to his belly. Seemed like he couldn’t keep anything straight in his head, and it wasn’t all due to the drugs. He’d forgotten, or more likely never been told, the surgeon’s name and the nurses seemed to change indiscriminately. “Did he say when he’d be back?” 

He had this half memory, that might or might not be real, of Bodie leaning down to him whilst he was on a trolley—moving, at any rate. The oxygen mask over his mouth and nose had prevented him from saying anything, but that didn’t matter, Bodie’s eyes had said it all for the both of them. 

Bodie’d never spoken out loud. 

The last thing Doyle could recall hearing was a broad Cockney accent proclaiming, “Bleedin’ out ‘is last pint, he is. Get ‘im to ‘ospital by yesti’day.”

 _When was that?_ What day was it now?

“All done, luv,” the nurse said kindly, washing her hands. “You’re nil by mouth for now, but I’ll bring your meds soon as I can.”

“What time is it?” Doyle asked, hating how plaintive he sounded.

“Goin’ on nine in the morning. I’d best be tending to that Mrs Landry in 209. She’s confused most of the time, poor lamb.” 

Mrs Landry wasn’t the only one, he thought spitefully.

She ticked a few boxes on his chart before slipping the pen into her pocket. “Oh, sorry, don’t know where my head’s gone. I’m Mrs Snow, your nurse until seven tonight. Bodie? Your mate, is he?”

_Finally._

“Said he’ll return when…” she chuckled, obviously trying to give him the actual quote, “Uncle George unchains him from the desk and your paperwork. Well, he did put a vulgar word in there I daren’t repeat but-- Does that mean anything to you?”

“It does.” Doyle smiled, imaging Bodie growling as he went through the shit-loads of reports required after they arrested anyone. That a member of CI5 had been gravely injured, not to mention Bodie shooting the assailant, in addition to taking down the other bloke, meant there’d be reams of documents to fill in. Would take him all day.

Content that Bodie wasn’t in any sort of danger, he let the morphine drag him under into sleep.

~*~

“Wake up, sunshine.”

Doyle groaned, the ache in his belly like a physical weight holding him down. Except he wanted to see Bodie, wanted to feel him— He simply couldn’t quite open his eyes at the moment.

“He’s shy around the ladies,” Bodie said to someone in the room.

 _“Not bloody likely!”_ Doyle meant to retort but nothing came out. He couldn’t pull in enough air, not with his belly full of spikes.

Then he felt a quick burning in his right arm, followed by the languid sweetness of morphine. He’d been hospitalised often enough to recognise quality narcotics.  
Took the edge off, let him breathe. Let him feel Bodie’s hand clasping his, holding on tightly.

Silly sod, always going on as if he were so tough, so solitary, when Doyle knew the truth. Bodie was lost without him, and he’d be dead twice over without Bodie. Simple as that. They were more than mates, more than partners. They were part of a whole.

“Missed you,” Doyle whispered, mouth so dry a pint at his local wouldn’t even wet his tongue. He gazed up at his lover. Bodie looked like he’d been sleeping rough—needed a shave and was wearing the same dark blue polo neck and cream coloured trousers, now filthy, that he’d had on the day before. 

“Wasn’t gone but a few hours,” Bodie answered, squeezing Doyle’s fingers. “Nurse put the good stuff into your drip?”

“Jealous, are you? Been a while since you were in hospital. Your turn next, is it?” Didn’t bear thinking about but they had to pretend, had to hold the line against the darkest fears. Lark it up and make jokes to face down the danger of their job.

“Nah, think you cut in line,” Bodie said lightly, glancing over his shoulder. “Didn’t have to, you know. I’d’ve done me time.”

“I’m ready to leave. Where’s the car?”

“Can’t, doctor’s orders say that you’re flat on your back for a fortnight, at least.”

“Never!” Doyle shouted a bit too forcefully and had to suck in shallow breaths while his guts smoothed out. 

“S’where I like you, anyway,” Bodie said with a lecherous grin. He bent over quick, planting a kiss on Doyle’s lips. “Easier to ravage you.”

Doyle could have done with a lot more where that came from but they were in a public hospital where anyone could walk in. It would be just like Murphy to barge in at the absolute worst moment.

“Would have brought you grapes,” Bodie continued as if he hadn’t done a thing. “But you’re—“

“Nil by mouth,” Doyle finished for him. Should have put him out, but it didn’t because Bodie was there, and that made everything better.

“So got this, instead.” He dropped it into Doyle’s right hand, the arm with the drip.

It was a small plastic ring with a hideous red ‘stone’. It smelt faintly of chocolate. “Found it in a Kinder egg, did you?” Doyle asked, inordinately touched. The thing was far too tiny to even fit on his pinkie finger. 

“Only the best for you, Ray,” Bodie said, that left eyebrow cocked at a rakish angle. “In sickness and in health—“

“Till death do us part,” Doyle replied, holding onto Bodie for all he was worth.

FIN


End file.
